All that matters
by MTraverAndujar
Summary: Don't touch me.


Disclaimer: Laura and Bill are not mine. If anything, I am theirs.

He sees her lying on the deck as soon as he enters her quarters.

Several hours have passed since he left her there, lost in a world of shadows. Several hours since she pushed him away. Earlier, he almost had needed to exert physical violence on himself to dominate his will, to be able to comply with what she ordered him to do. To give her time and space, a time and space overflowed with desperation and loneliness. To wait. To hold back from coming to check on her much sooner.

The room is dark. Fire has devoured all the pages she has fed to the flames, and it has burned out. Bill stays still for a second before switching on the light. He wants his eyes to get used to the semi-darkness. He wants to know if he can make out the shapes, her shape, if he can approach her without startling her. Without bothering her. Maybe an unexpected stroke of light is more than she can take.

He hesitates for a few seconds before finally reaching out towards the small lamp on the console. He presses the button. A dim, yellowish glow spreads around. The smell of burnt paper invades his nostrils, as intense as the memory it evokes: Laura, now little more than a ghost, a spectre, the wreckage of the woman she once was. Laura pushed to the void, beyond her limits; those limits that he so often wondered existed. A shaky Laura, her gaze empty and lost and an expression on her face that slit his gut open, that makes his heart skip a beat every time he remembers.

If she has not noticed his arrival, this simple gesture must have revealed his presence to her now. Now she knows he is there. Now she knows he is back. However, he cannot be sure if she is asleep because she is lying on her side, her back to him, facing the same bulkhead that Bill sees in front of him. He stays still, waiting for a reaction. There is none. Still, it is precisely the absence of any reaction, her utter stillness, her persistent refusal to move when lights have gone on, that gives her away.

She is awake.

Bill watches her in silence. He watches her shoulder, her back, rise and fall to the rhythm of her gentle breathing. She does not turn around. Will she reject him again?

Don't. Touch. Me.

He knows he can somehow comfort her in her bitterness, share her grief, her disappointment. He knows, or he thinks he knows, what needs to be done, what needs to be said to infuse some confidence in her, to bring her a measure of peace. However, she has ruthlessly faced him with the one thing he cannot handle: her rejection. If she does not let him in, if she cannot stand his touch, if she does not want him to see her, to even stay in the same room, how can he help her? Worse: if she kicks him away like this, what is there left for him?

Don't touch me. Those words resonate in his ears like a mantra. That sentence is like a bombshell that has just gone off in his hands, like a stab in the middle of his chest, exactly where his scar begins. It is a fireball in the pit of his stomach. If he cannot get closer to her, he is helpless. Everything slips away from his grasp.

Life itself is slipping away.

He walks in carefully. He stops barely one step away from her lying form and stays standing still, watching her. Locks of her hair, that is no longer her hair, spread messily on the rug. Her body is curled up as if she were trying to fight a sudden cold, as if she were failing to because the cold is no longer outside but inside her. In her flesh. In her bones. She is barefoot; her feet appear so small in their socks. In this very moment she is rubbing one foot against the other mechanically. A little further, her shoes look as if someone had just dropped them there, as is Laura had kicked them off without even bothering to move, pushing each of them off with her toes. Two inches from her hands, a pile of ashes reveals the exact place where the Book of Pythia has seen death.

Bill represses the impulse to kneel down and hold her. Even if his body is aching to do it and his heart is breaking to see her like this, he knows he needs to be careful. He ponders his next move. For an instant, he doubts if it is better to just ask her to please turn around. Maybe it is better if she is the one to move, if he invites her to look at him.

'Laura', he murmurs.

Silence. Has she breathed in a little more deeply or is his imagination playing tricks on him? Bill kneels down slowly. He sits on the floor right behind her, crosses his legs. His exhausted joints complain and he lets out a low grunt as he shifts his weight trying to find an easier posture. He outstretches one hand and leaves it there, hanging over her shoulder. He is shaking.

Will she reject him again?

He does not know. But he knows he has to try. The past few hours have been empty, void, endless. He has spent the entire day wandering around the ship without purpose, like a vagabond, with a wound in the middle of his chest so huge that still now he cannot understand how nobody noticed. He will not make it much longer like this. He needs her. He needs her as much as he knows she needs him.

'Laura, please. Let me touch you.'

His voice comes out broken.

Carefully, he lays his hand on her shoulder, and waits. He waits for the rejection to arrive, he almost expects it. Nothing happens. Only then, he dares to squeeze that shoulder lightly, to rub circles on it with his thumb, a shy gesture meant to comfort her.

He hears a sharp, ragged intake of breath.

'I can't see you like this, Laura. I can't bear it. It's killing me. Please, don't push me away.'

His voice is even shakier now.

He gently brushes a lock of hair off her cheek with his other hand. He wants to see her face. His gaze slides along the hills and valleys of her profile: her lashes, her nose, her lips, her chin, her neck. She blinks. He lifts one hand to her cheek and strokes it softly with the back of two fingers.

'It's over, Bill. Everything was a lie.'

Despite her voice being just a sigh thick with despair, relief washes over him at the fact that she has, at last, said something.

'No, it wasn't. All the way down to here was just like you had envisaged it. Nobody could have guessed what was in store for us. Nobody could have foreseen this.'

Silence becomes thick. Bill is not sure how to interpret it: is she pondering what he has just said, or is her mind a hundred light-years away already? She looks like she is wandering a foreign landscape, a different universe. One where he does not even exist.

'I heard you.' She says suddenly.

He does not know what she means immediately. It takes a minute for him to figure it out: not even half an hour ago, he has spoken through the wireless in a transmission to the entire fleet, communicating his determination to resume their journey, renovating his commitment to find them a home. What must Laura have felt upon hearing his words? He stays silent and waits, but she does not elaborate. Just that. I heard you.

His hands stay where they are: one on her shoulder, the other on her cheek. His fingers move slowly, stroking her, re-establishing the sorely missed contact. It is now that she, at last, shifts and rolls over to lie on her back. She lets out a low whimper, as if this sole move on the floor were harder for her than all the ordeals she has gotten through to get here. Her wig sits slightly askew. Her face is dry but the light is off in her two green orbs, and they are looking at him through a curtain of water. Bill's gut clenches. This woman, this prodigy of strength, determination, warmth… This woman who has been his partner, his support, his confident, the refuge where he always managed to rebuild his own faith, now lies before him devastated. Undone.

Realization hits him hard: if he cannot help her, she will drag him to the bottom of the hole with her. Everything he is can be traced back to this woman. It has been like this for a long time now. He must achieve this, he must bring her back, or there will be hope for neither of them.

'Everything was meaningless, Bill. Nothing I fought for was worth that fight. Not even one of all the lives we lost on the way here, not a single sacrifice… all was in vain.'

He shakes his head.

'I failed everyone. I failed you.'

'No.'

'My mission was not such mission. It was a lie. It was a mirage.'

'Laura…'

She falls back into silence. He waits for a beat, giving her room to say something else if she needs to. Since she does not speak, he proceeds.

'That's not true, Laura. Everything you did for the people, for us, there's a huge value to it. You guided us during the entire journey. You are not what you are just because some frakked-up prophecy says so. I need no prophecy to know who you are. To love you.'

'A trip to nowhere.' She murmurs in the same flat tone, as if she were not listening.

He looks at her tenderly. His fingers keep stroking her face.

'But of course…' she trails off, choked. 'I'm going to die just the same.'

Burning tears trail down Laura's cheeks now. However, no sound comes out of her throat. Her gaze is locked with his as salty water paints more and more lines on her face. This silent weeping, this quiet defeat, makes it all so much worse. Her gaze is begging him for both help and forgiveness. Forgiveness for having been this close to leaving him alone in the middle of a meaningless universe. For not being able to be his faith anymore.

'No', he repeats.

No. he regrets it even before the word passes his lips. He knows how absurd it is. He knows how ridiculous it must have sounded to her. She has reproached him his obstinate denial so many times. She wants him to face the truth.

No. Wrapping both of her hands together, he gently pulls her up. She lets him help her. She stays still for a moment, willing the sudden dizziness away. He parts his legs and she crawls into the circle he is opening for her. She wraps her arms tight around his waist, cuddles into his lap. He holds her as close as he feels he can without hurting her. He rocks her. He breathes in her scent, feels her warm breath on his chest. He could not be sadder, but he is whole again.

Whole, in the middle of a pile of broken hopes, a hostile universe; inside a body, mind and heart that are all exhausted. Whole, as long as life, death, still let him keep her. The day they take her away, nothing will matter anymore. But meanwhile, he will not surrender her without putting up the fight of his life. He will keep fighting all the way, even when she no longer can.

Her words reach his ears like a whisper, like a prayer.

'I don't deserve this.'

'Nobody deserves it more.'

He kisses her temple.

Silence. And her voice again, stronger:

'I want to stay with you.'

A moment after, she lifts her head off his chest to look at him. She smiles, and it is the kind of smile that reveals a broken soul. The next thing he feels is her fingers, long and cold, on his own worn cheek. She pulls at his chin gently and covers his lips with hers.

It feels like that kiss, Bill realizes as he revels in the feel, as he savours it, as he receives this gift and gives her his own. It feels like that first kiss he gave her when everything was just starting between them but it was already too late. If anything, this one is, maybe, braver, more urgent: it is thick with the force of a love that is now mutual and acknowledged.

And that is all that matters.


End file.
